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I Object To Your Projections
by Victoria Johnson Have you seen that episode of "The West Wing"? This is a Fun with Maps column, so you know which one I mean. The one where it's Big Block of Cheese Day, and CJ meets with the...
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A Road-Tripper's Guide To Some Of The Country's Oddest, Most Amazing Roads
by Victoria Johnson Growing up, my family went on a lot of car trips. A lot of them. Along with our trusty steed, the maroon minivan, my mom, sister and I journeyed all around the country, from Death...
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How To Read This Morning's Weather Map
by Victoria Johnson Here’s this morning’s weather map, straight from the Weather Channel website. What do we see? Well, it's going to be a purple line in California, typical for this time of year....
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Do You Know What Time It Is?
by Victoria Johnson Chester A. Arthur gets a lot of flak. He deserves most of it. If you're president, you really shouldn't sell off wagonloads of priceless White House furniture at auction. But one...
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A Survey Of Moon Maps Since the 17th Century
by Victoria Johnson How do you map something 238,856 miles away? You can’t just send out a team of surveyors. At least, you couldn’t until relatively recently. Before then, lunar cartographers...
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A Scenic Tour Of Toxic Sites Across America
by Victoria Johnson So we’ve all scanned Google Earth for the Indian ship-breaking beaches, or the rows of planes in aircraft boneyards, or the abandoned and overgrown town of Chernobyl. But toxic,...
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Pictures Of You From Space (With Bonus Quiz!)
by Victoria Johnson Do you ever wonder how many pictures there are with you in the background? Like, the ones taken at crowded bars during other people's birthdays; or when you stroll through someone...
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Blame It On Volcanoes
by Victoria Johnson Volcanoes! They're responsible for so many things, like pumice, the spontaneous combustion of Bobby Jindal's political career and that part of Disney's Fantasia right before...
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The Maps We Wandered Into As Kids
by Victoria Johnson If I ruled the world, or at least a publishing company, all books would contain as much supplementary information as possible. Nonfiction, fiction—doesn't matter. Every work would...
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A Reading List For People Who Love Learning About The World
by Victoria Johnson One of the great things about geography is that it sneaks into just about everything, including books. After all, everything happens somewhere, right? When it comes to describing...
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How To Get Lost Less Often
by Victoria Johnson No one's supposed to get lost these days. Smartphones have maps on them—and compasses, too. But phones have a way of losing their signals when you most need them, and then there...
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How To Make Beer Ice Cream
by Victoria Johnson A series on things to make, eat and imbibe this summer. My current pipe dream is to drive an ice-cream food truck and stock it with nontraditional flavors—tamarind sorbet, dark...
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Hurricane Names That Spell Trouble: An Unscientific Survey
by Victoria Johnson On April 13th of this year, the name Irene was officially retired from the list of Atlantic Basin Hurricane names. In all, six Hurricane Irenes have raged around the Atlantic, but...
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How To Enjoy A Beef On Weck When You're Not In Buffalo
by Victoria Johnson A series about foods we miss and our quests to recreate them. I have no idea why the chicken wing was the food to make it out of Buffalo. I mean, I understand the appeal, but its...
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The Great Pumpkin Beer-Off
by Victoria Johnson Pumpkin beer, like anchovies on pizza or shorts on men, can be a divisive topic: you either like it or you don't. If you don't, well, walk on by—nothing to see here. But if you...
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Thar Might Be Dragons… Or Thar Might Be Nothing At All
by Victoria Johnson The recent "disappearance" of Sandy Island—a long-mapped island in the South Pacific that appears to have never existed—was a fresh reminder that, even with the most modern,...
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The Very, Very Best Holiday Beers To Bring To A Party
by Victoria Johnson It’s the holidays! Time for fun and laughter and parties, parties to which you are expected to bring something or other. Can’t cook? Don’t want to be that guy that shows up with...
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Beyond Nemo: The Buffalo Weather Service's Odd, Delightful Way With Storm Names
by Victoria Johnson A little backstory on how snow storm Nemo came to have a name: the practice of naming snow storms came out of the National Weather Service's Buffalo, NY office, where they've been...
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Why We Need Best Supporting-Supporting Actor & Actress Categories
by Victoria Johnson This might sound a little nuts at first, but hear me out: the Academy needs to add another Acting category. I know, I know: the ceremony is already too long, and actors already get...
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NFL Attendance, Explained
by Victoria Johnson Left: Dallas Cowboys Quarterback Tony Romo, age 17. Right: Irish Sweeper in Fall River Iron Works, age 17, circa 1900. Dallas Cowboys Arlington, TX Attendance: 87047 Emigrants from...
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The Capacity Of Baseball Stadiums In Real Numbers
by Victoria Johnson Left: Dodger Stadium. Right: Michael Jordan's house. Dodger Stadium 56000 Los Angeles Dodgers Square footage of Michael Jordan's house Coors Field 50480 Colorado Rockies Prison...
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Gerrymandered, U.S.A.
In the last Fun With Maps, we talked about a Pennsylvania congressman drawn out of his own district by mere yards. Though that’s a particularly targeted example of gerrymandering, it’s certainly not...
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And They Named It Dodgy Island
Greenland is ice, Iceland is nice—and Carcass Island is full of penguins. In this installment, let’s investigate some of the more suspicious-sounding islands out there and see whether they live up to...
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That Map's All Wrong For You
The infamous Grenada invasion of 1983 was, in addition to everything else that went wrong, hindered by a wildly out-of-date British map. The map predated the construction of the Richmond Hill Insane...
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I Don't Even Know Who You Are Anymore
A couple of years ago I came home from a hockey game completely hammered, fired up the ol’ eBay and bid on a dozen outdated globes. I didn’t even remember that I’d done this until days later when my...
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